IN HOUSE RACES, MORE G.O.P. SEATS ARE SEEN AT RISK

By ADAM NAGOURNEY; Reporting was contributed by Dave Staba from Buffalo and Sarah Wheaton and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

Published: October 7, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

At least five more Republican Congressional seats are now in serious contention, analysts said Friday, an unwelcome development for Republicans as they begin to confront a political environment further darkened for them by the Congressional page scandal.

The fury over sexually charged messages sent to male teenage pages by Representative Mark Foley of Florida is undercutting Republican support among elderly voters, suburbanites and women, analysts from both parties said.

More immediately -- and more alarmingly for Republican strategists who have looked to the party's powerful voter turnout operation to save the party this year -- there are signs that the furor is sapping the enthusiasm of a group essential to Republican victories in 2002 and 2004: religious conservatives.

''The social conservatives are frustrated with what's going on,'' said Saulius Anuzis, the chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan, where, he said, one-third of his volunteers are social conservatives. ''We have heard disappointment and disenchantment. The level of commitment isn't as fierce as it ought to be.''

The political uproar is playing out in races across the country and comes with Republicans already struggling against the political weight of more bad news from Iraq. The page scandal has left leaders and candidates in both parties to come up with new strategies a month from Election Day.

Democrats placed advertisements linking embattled Republican incumbents to Mr. Foley, including spots in Ohio and Indiana that began broadcasting Friday. Democratic House and Senate candidates pressed Republican incumbents to say whether they thought Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who along with other senior members of the Republican leadership has come under fire as failing to act on early signals that Mr. Foley was sexually harassing teenagers, should stay in power.

In New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican Senate candidate, called on Mr. Hastert to step down.

The Democratic response to President Bush's radio address on Saturday features a Democratic House candidate, Patty Wetterling of Minnesota, attacking House Republican leaders as ignoring warnings about Mr. Foley's behavior, according to excerpts released Friday.

''Foley sent obvious predatory signals, received loud and clear by members of Congressional leadership, who swept them under the rug to protect their political power,'' says Ms. Wetterling, a Democrat whose 11-year-old son was kidnapped 17 years ago and has not been found.

Republicans and their allies, including conservative talk radio hosts, have responded by rallying around Mr. Hastert and blaming Democrats and the news media for the frenzy.

Talk radio hosts, working off a list of talking points distributed by Republican Party officials, recounted how two decades ago, House Democrats stood behind Representative Gerry E. Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, after he engaged in sex with a male page.

In upstate New York, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, who is trailing his Democratic challenger according to two new polls, planned to go on television to defend himself after a labor union began broadcasting a 30-second radio advertisement questioning whether he had done all he could after hearing a complaint that Mr. Foley was harassing teenagers.

''Nobody's angrier and more disappointed than me that I didn't catch his lies,'' Mr. Reynolds said in advertisements scheduled to begin over the weekend. ''I trusted that others had investigated. Looking back, more should have been done, and for that I am sorry.''

George Rasley, an aide to Representative Deborah Pryce, Republican of Ohio, who was linked to Mr. Foley in a Democratic advertisement that began running Friday, said the Foley investigation further soured an already tough environment for Republicans in Ohio, a state hammered by corruption investigations this year.

''This is one more thing that makes people wonder about politicians and politics,'' Mr. Rasley said. ''It reinforces this notion of Washington being a place that bears no resemblance to real America.''

The page scandal is part of a run of difficult tidings for Republicans, including a stream of bad news out of Iraq, disclosure of an intelligence report that found that the invasion might have worsened the threat of terrorism and Mr. Bush's continued unpopularity.

In the White House, aides have watched with frustration as campaign appearances by Mr. Bush, in which he hammers Democrats on national security, receive little coverage, subsumed by the Foley case.

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he believed that Republicans turned a corner when Mr. Hastert accepted responsibility for the mishandling of the page scandal after days of being pressed to take action by restive Republicans.

''I'm looking at every single bit of public and private data,'' Mr. Mehlman said. ''So far, I have seen a minimal effect of this particular situation, which is not to say that I don't take it seriously.''

Democrats need to capture 15 House seats to take control of Congress; until the last week or two, about 40 Republican seats had been judged in play, of which 20 had been considered highly competitive. But analysts said at least five more Republican seats, and as many as eight, that had once been considered relative long shots for Democrats had now swung firmly into play.

Correction: October 17, 2006, Tuesday
A front-page article on Oct. 7 about Republican House seats at risk in the midterm elections misidentified an organization that has run advertisements criticizing the environmental record of Representative Richard W. Pombo, a California Republican seeking re-election. It is the League of Conservation Voters -- not the League of Women Voters, which does not support or oppose candidates for office at any level of government.